Qualla: Stevenage https://qualla.com/stevenage en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/stevenage-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Stevenage https://qualla.com/stevenage Stevenage: Introduction https://qualla.com/stevenage/ Photo credit Ben Brooksbank, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Lewis Silkin stepped off the train at Stevenage station on a wet evening in early 1946, the platform signs had been changed to read Silkingrad. The Labour minister responsible for housing was on his way to a public meeting to explain that his ministry had decided, under the new New Towns Act, to convert the Hertfordshire village of Stevenage into the first of the post-war New Towns. The hall was full. The crowd outside was bigger than the hall. Roughly half the village's population had turned up to object. Silkin stood his ground. "It's no good your jeering," he said. "It's going to be done." The bulldozers arrived the following year. The first thing they knocked down was the Old Town Hall, the building in which the protest had been held.

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Image: Ben Brooksbank | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/stevenage-wp/gcpz-stevenage-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Stevenage: The Stiff Oak https://qualla.com/stevenage/ Photo credit Clint Mann, CC BY-SA 2.0. Stevenage is an old place. The name probably descends from Old English stiþen āc, meaning the stiff oak, perhaps a particular tree that travellers used as a landmark on the Great North Road. The settlement is recorded as Stithenæce around 1060 and as Stigenace in the Domesday Boo...

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Image: Clint Mann | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/stevenage-wp/gcpz-stevenage-the-stiff-oak.mp3 0:06 2 full Stevenage: The Highwayman and the Hangman https://qualla.com/stevenage/ Photo credit Northmetpit, Public domain. The road brought wealth to Stevenage and also crime. James Whitney was born in Stevenage around 1660 and apprenticed to a butcher in Hitchin before opening an inn at Cheshunt. When the business failed, he turned to highway robbery and within a few years had a gang of fifty men wo...

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Image: Northmetpit | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/stevenage-wp/gcpz-stevenage-the-highwayman-and-the-hangman.mp3 0:06 3 full Stevenage: Silkingrad https://qualla.com/stevenage/ Photo credit BWCSEB1989, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 1 August 1946 Stevenage was designated as the first of the new towns under the Attlee government's New Towns Act. The Stevenage Development Corporation was set up to plan and build the expansion. Its first chairman was the architect Clough Williams-Ellis, best known for creati...

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Image: BWCSEB1989 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/stevenage-wp/gcpz-stevenage-silkingrad.mp3 0:06 4 full Stevenage: Claxton's Cycle Network https://qualla.com/stevenage/ Photo credit AnemoneProjectors (talk), CC BY-SA 2.0. Eric Claxton, the development corporation's chief engineer from 1962 to 1972, was the engineer behind one of Stevenage's most unusual features. The town has a complete network of segregated cycle paths and underpasses, designed to keep bicycles entirely separate from cars. Claxto...

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Image: AnemoneProjectors (talk) | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/stevenage-wp/gcpz-stevenage-claxtons-cycle-network.mp3 0:06 5 full Stevenage: Missiles, Satellites, and Lewis Hamilton https://qualla.com/stevenage/ Photo credit Peter O'Connor aka anemoneprojectors, CC BY-SA 2.0. Stevenage's industrial estate at Gunnels Wood was designed to make the new town a place of work as well as a place of housing, and the firms that settled there over the next forty years made some of Britain's most advanced products. MBDA, descended through several mergers from Br...

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Image: Peter O'Connor aka anemoneprojectors | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/stevenage-wp/gcpz-stevenage-missiles-satellites-and-lewis-hamilton.mp3 0:06 6 full Stevenage: Old Town, New Town, Next Town https://qualla.com/stevenage/ Photo credit Traveler100, CC BY-SA 4.0. The medieval core of Stevenage is still there, up the hill from the new town centre. The Old Town high street has Tudor House (built before 1500), the Cromwell Hotel, and several of the old coaching inns. St Nicholas's Church, parts of which date to the twelfth century, sits at t...

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Image: Traveler100 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/stevenage-wp/gcpz-stevenage-old-town-new-town-next-town.mp3 0:06 7 full